


Painful Memories

by Twyd



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Confusion, Crushes, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Head Injury, Internal Conflict, M/M, Memories, Pre-Slash, Slash, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 01:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13559748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twyd/pseuds/Twyd
Summary: Shizuo hits his head and has a spot of amnesia. And for once, Izaya's not going to take advantage of him. He’s not.





	Painful Memories

Shizuo has been down for some time.

Izaya is still standing a little distance away, smiling, though his teeth are clenched. At this point, Shizuo should have got up, or someone should have come to help. He tells himself he’s sticking around to make sure someone _didn’t_ help, and to sneer at Shizuo for his pathetic attempts at playing dead. Which isn't really Shizuo’s style, but what else could he be doing?

Another minute passes. Izaya begins to get restless.

“Shizu-chan,” he calls, sounding bored.

He flicks his knife open and edges forward.

“I have a knife in my hand,” he warns. “If you’re thinking of trying anything.”

No response. He gets close enough to nudge Shizuo’s leg with his shoe. He repeats the motion with Shizuo's hip.

A flicker of life comes then, and Izaya draws back, watching.

Shizuo raises his head as if it weighed too much. His eyes focus on Izaya. He looks confused. More than confused, he looks surprised, as if Izaya were the last person he expected to see. He keeps staring, and his features don’t contort with their usual fury or disgust. He almost looks embarrassed, like he knows he shouldn’t stare but can’t help it anyway.

“Are you going to get up?” Izaya calls eventually, impatient to break the spell.

Shizuo blinks then, and seems to realise for the first time that he is on the ground.

He pushes himself up carefully, as if he’s still not feeling steady. Then he casts his eyes over Izaya again.

“Who are you?”

Izaya stares t him. The words reverberate round his brain several times before sinking in. Then he laughs. It is a shrill, slightly unpleasant sound.

“Unbelievable.” That’s all he says. He is smiling, but his heart is hammering horribly hard. He can see by Shizuo’s face that he is not joking. That Izaya will have to call Shinra, or get someone else to call Shinra, and Shinra will be mad, and he might not even be able to do anything-

“Are you all right?”

Izaya snaps his head up at this question.

“Am _I_ all right?”

Shizuo nods, looking at him with the same stupid look in his eyes.

“You have a knife in your hand. Did someone try to hurt you?”

This should be funny. His sides should be splitting with laughter, but instead dread just rolls around his stomach, and he feels himself flushing.

“You’ve hit your head,” he tells Shizuo through grit teeth. “You’ll remember everything in a minute.”

“Oh,” Shizuo says, not sounding as traumatised by this as he should. “It does kinda hurt.”

Izaya ends up calling Shinra. He doesn’t even try to talk himself out of it. It is for entirely selfish reasons, he tells himself, to save himself hassle down the line.

“I’ve called you a doctor,” he tells Shizuo when he hangs up, who had listened to every word but probably not understood much. “He’s your friend,” he adds.

“Thank you.”

He is still staring at Izaya, and Izaya finds he has to drop his own eyes, feeling awkward.

_Maybe I should just hit him over the head again and it’ll all come back._

“I never got your name.”

Izaya gives a growl of impatience.

“You know my name, it’s Izaya. You’ve known me for years.”

“Sorry,” Shizuo says softly, and looks genuinely sad to have forgotten Izaya’s name.

It is an age before Shinra and Celty finally arrive, in which Izaya had been feeling more and more awkward, and more and more hot tempered as a result. But he can relax now.

To his amusement, Shizuo recoils when he sees the headless Celty.

“What the fuck is that?”

Izaya starts laughing then, and he lets all of his nervous energy out with it.

“It’s your best friend, Shizu-chan,” he crows. “You hang out together all the time!”

“Shut up, Izaya,” Shinra says, forever neutral in their fights except for where Celty is concerned.

He’s barely finished laughing when Celty strides up to him and takes him by the throat. She holds her phone in his face with her spare hand.

_If you DARE take advantage of him when he’s like this, I’ll kill you. I mean it._

He can hear Shizuo protesting in the background, but Shinra manages to keep him away. Celty isn't really hurting him, anyway. 

“Take advantage of him?” Izaya reads out loud. “Me? I’m the one who called for help, aren’t I? Maybe I can be his best friend now.”

She lets go of him in disgust and types something else.

_I mean it._

She leaves him to go and stand with Shinra and Shizuo, who flinches back when she approaches. If she still had her head, smoke would be coming out of her ears.

Izaya dusts himself off, still chuckling.

“Well, you guys seem to have everything all under control, so I think I'll just…”

Shinra and Celty take no notice, but Shizuo looks at him with beseeching puppy eyes.  _You're leaving?_

Izaya frowns. He turns from Shizuo and goes home.

-

He should be happy. He made a point of enjoying everything that happened to him, good or bad, and this should be off-the-scales good. He’s unable to think of anything else, that Shizuo will get time off, that he might even be sent away, to other doctors or just to somewhere where he couldn’t get himself into fights, but thinking all this doesn't bring Izaya pleasure. He’s itching to call Shinra, but his pride won’t let him, and anyway, Shinra thinks it is all his fault and so probably won’t tell him anything.

He finds himself googling head injuries and amnesia, tensing as he reads the worst case scenarios and feeling better when he reads the rest.

When Shinra calls him, he answers so fast his phone’s barely had a chance to make a sound.

“Hello?”

“-Oh, hey, Izaya. I just wanted to thank you for calling me for Shizuo. I know you were probably tempted to do otherwise.”

Izaya feels another belt of tension that he didn’t was there loosen. Shinra is not mad at him.

“Well, you know me, I have such class.”

“Yeah, right,” Shinra scoffs good naturedly. “So what happened exactly?”

Izaya’s not stupid. He knows Shinra probably _is_ mad at him, at least on Celty’s behalf, and is calling just for this information. But he doesn’t begrudge him it.

“He was running after me under the bridge and he didn’t duck in time. Hardly my fault,” he adds. “I didn’t ask him to chase me.”

“OK,” Shinra says. He goes quiet, thinking.

“What are you going to do with him? Lock him up?”

“No. We’ve told everyone he’s close to – Kasuka, Tom, a couple of others – and we’re going to have a kind of intervention for him, where we tell him everything he needs to know. It’s not going to be a big deal. We’ll just wait for him to come back in his own time. These things always tend to right themselves on their ow- “

Izaya is laughing too hard to listen. 

“An intervention?” he splutters. “That’s hilarious! I’m invited, right? I’m a very important part of Shizu-chan’s life.”

“No,” Shinra says, and Izaya can practically hear him frowning, which makes it even funnier. “He keeps talking about you though.”

Izaya stops laughing as if someone has thrown water over him.

“What do you mean?”

“He just keeps asking who you are, who you are to him, and he keeps asking for more whatever we tell him. He can’t seem to get his head around the fact that you’re enemies. Did you say something to him?”

“…”

“Izaya?”

“What? No. I didn’t say anything. He asked me who I was, and I said I was Izaya and that he knows me. I told him he’d hit his head. That's it.”

He can feel himself flushing for no reason. It’s suddenly not funny any more, and he feels as uncomfortable as he did when Shizuo had first asked him who he was.

“Well, anyway,” Shinra is saying. “We’ll brief him on you. There are probably some Youtube clips of you two crashing around the city or something, which should help jog his memory some. But in the meantime, could you promise not to do anything? For me?”

“For Celty,” he says cryptically. “But I suppose it’s the same.”

“Yes.”

“…fine,” he says, like it’s a big effort. The truth is he doesn’t actually want to do anything. He doesn’t know why. He wants to avoid this situation like a stop sign that’s flying towards his head.

“Thank you,” Shinra says. “I’ll keep you posted. It shouldn’t be too long. It wasn’t a terribly bad injury, and Shizuo’s so strong…”

-

Good on his word, Izaya had been avoiding Shizuo and getting on with his work. He’s able to ramp up his efficiency in order to distract himself enough, and he notices Shiki give him an odd look over one of their meetings, as if he can’t decide whether to promote him or have him killed.

Whenever he does need to go to Ikebukuro, like now, Izaya keeps his hood up and his head down, stays away from part of the neighbourhood that he knows.

He is doing this when something smashes in the distance, with the noise and intensity of a car crash, and it is followed by a familiar roar. Izaya had winced at the first sound, but now a smile is spreading all over his face. Finally, the monster is back! Who knew it would be such a relief?

He tips his hood back and puts his hands into his pockets, forcing himself to saunter instead of run the way he wants to, in the direction everyone is running from.

He makes it into Shizuo’s path, still smiling, ready to fly away from him the minute Shizuo sees him.

Shizuo sees him. But he doesn’t throw anything. He doesn’t even scowl. His face clears completely.

“Hi.”

Izaya’s own smile freezes as he realises his mistake. _He doesn’t remember, the fucking idiot, he’s just having a strop._

It’s worse than that. For a minute, Izaya knows he had probably looked glad to see him, and that Shizuo would have seen this. He may be an amnesiac nutcase, but he’s not stupid. Sure enough, he is looking at Izaya now with what looked like hope in his eyes.

“I have to go,” Izaya says quickly, just as Shizuo opens his mouth to say something else, and turns from him and disappears.

He slows to a rapid walk once he’s sure he’s safe, takes out his phone and calls Shinra.

“I just saw him,” he says. “He was ripping up some parking meters but he didn’t recognise me. I didn’t do anything,” he adds.

“Yeah, he is getting back to normal. He remembers Celty and I, and lots of other things. You’re still confusing to him though.”

“You should let me speak to him,” Izaya growls. “It’s no good you telling me we hate each other. You have to let me show him.”

“What, you want me to give you a free licence to be as cruel to him as you want?”

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far. And anyway, how do you expect me- “

He stops then, cutting himself off as he freezes in place. He ends the call and whirls around.

“Why are you following me?”

He practically yells it. He hasn’t been this worked up since he was at school and he doesn't know why.

Shizuo slinks out from an abandoned shop doorway, looking like a dog that’s been caught chewing the rug. He doesn’t say anything.

“Why are you following me?” Izaya repeats.

Shizuo just looks at him with the same confused, slightly helpless look of before, but it is bolder now.

“You know why.”

Izaya feels his whole body flame. He has to look away. His mind is coming up with a lot of protests to this response, but it is just background noise and can’t make its way to the forefront of his brain, let alone his mouth.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Shizuo says.

“Shinra told me to.”

“He did?” Shizuo frowns. “Well, don’t. I know he’s trying to help, and that I’m still not back to normal, but I don’t want him deciding things like that for me. I don’t want you to avoid me.”

Izaya says nothing. He is filling with a ridiculous sense of panic at the uncertainty of the situation, at something he can’t laugh off.

“What is it?”

Izaya shakes his head.

“Tell me.”

“…everything they’ve told you about me is true.” He lifts his eyes to Shizuo’s to make sure he’s getting it. “The things I’ve done, the way I am, it’s all true. All of it. I’m not your friend.”

Shizuo stares back at him steadily. Not even a flicker of conflict passes over his face.

“I know,” he says. He had been coming closer as Izaya spoke, and he is within touching distance now. “I know we’re not friends. I don't want to be your friend.”

Izaya sees, as clearly and inevitably as gravity, what is going to happen, and yet makes no move to stop it. When Shizuo kisses him, he can feel all of his insides giving into it, lets himself into Shizuo’s arms and into his mouth.

“I knew it,” Shizuo murmurs, like he’d been holding it in. “I knew you felt the same way.”

“…this hasn’t happened before,” Izaya says quickly. “Just so we’re clear. We don’t have any history.”

“Yeah, I know,” Shizuo says, still holding on to him. “I’d remember.”

How can Izaya not kiss him again?

He doesn’t know how much  time passes before he gets hold of himself again. When he won’t let Shizuo kiss him again, Shizuo settles for kissing his shoulders, his hands, whatever else is in reach instead.

“Why do you keep fighting this?” Shizuo says. “I know you’re not scared of me. That’s the one thing about you I do remember.”

“Shizuo,” Izaya says, with effort. “When you do remember everything - and you will, any day now - you’re going to hate me. You’re going to kill me for encouraging you in this. Shinra will too, as a matter of fact, and a lot more people.”

“I won’t, and I won’t let them-”

“I don’t care, my point is that you’re wrong.”

He pulls his hand from Shizuo’s lips and pushes him away by the chest.

Shizuo lets him go sadly.

“You’re wrong,” Izaya repeats. “And if you think anything of me, you’ll do as I’m saying, as it’s in both our best interests.”

“What do you want, then?” Shizuo says, frowning. “You _want_ to avoid me and for us to hate each other?”

Izaya opens his mouth, the words catching in his throat.

“I want you to fucking remember,” he snarls. “I don’t want to have to deal with a fucking invalid.”

“I’m working on it,” Shizuo says. “But I don’t think it’ll make much difference.”

Izaya looks at him with too much contempt for words.

“Yeah yeah, I get that we hate each other,” Shizuo continues. “I even sort of remember it. But it’s not important. I feel like you could be a murderer and it still wouldn’t really change anything. I’d still feel the same way when I look at you.”

Izaya has to look away.

“I remember you,” Shizuo goes on. “You’re not like some handsome stranger. I know you.”

“You’re confused,” Izaya says quickly, feeling his skin burning. “You must be mixing me up with someone else.”

“Who?” Shizuo actually laughs. “Who in the world is like you?”

Izaya doesn’t laugh. He imagines for the first time how this is going to hit him when Shizuo finally does remember. He wonders, in a distant kind of way, if this cruelty is some kind of punishment for those he’d inflicted on others.

“Hey,” Shizuo steps close to him again, concerned. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry I don’t remember. I’m trying really hard. More stuff’s coming back to me every day. I look at something or I hear someone and it just clicks, and everything makes more and more sense every day now. Except you,” he sighs, taking Izaya’s hand. “You make less sense every day.”

Izaya looks at their clasped hands for a moment and shakes his head.

“I have to go.”

He breaks their grip and turns, and Shizuo doesn’t try to stop him.

-

He avoids Ikebukuro after this. It makes more sense this way. Shinra will call him as soon as he gets green light, rather than this frustrating amber they’re dealing with.

Word had got round about Shizuo’s ‘problem,’ but he had recovered enough of his memories to keep from being taken advantage of.

Namie makes a couple of dry remarks towards Izaya around the gossip, wondering why he hasn’t been plotting something or at least happy, but he just brushes this off. She could be annoying perceptive, especially where feelings were concerned, so the less he says to her the better.

So, he’s sticking to Shinjuku, he's sticking to the boring and the every day, getting moody, feeling like he’s waiting for something that he doesn’t even want to happen, yet impatient for it anyway.

He’s approaching his building when he feels a familiar chill down his spine. He stops, to the huffs of an unknown neighbour walking behind him, who he lets past. He looks around, and it doesn’t take him long to spot the blonde, tufty hair.

Shizuo catches his eye and blushes, coming forward to meet him.

“Sorry.”

Izaya looks at him, trying to summon some kind of anger and not quite managing it.  What he says comes out flat and resigned.

“Why are you here?”

“You know why.”

His same words from last time. Izaya wants to berate him, wants to call him pathetic and creepy and stupid and fucked-up, but Shizuo would see through it in his newfound calm.

He puts his hands on Shizuo’s shoulders when Shizuo pulls him close, looking at him with sudden energy.

“Whatever happens is your own fault,” he warns. “I’ve tried. I’ve told you and told you and I’ve pushed you away, and you wouldn’t listen. So everything that happens from here is your fault.”

Shizuo nods, looking annoyingly happy.

“Fine, all my fault, I'm totally fine with that. I’ll sign a contract if you like." And he kisses Izaya before the informant can tell him how stupid he is.

-

As Izaya tries to enjoy everything that happens to him, good or bad, he enjoys this, and it is effortless. He closes his eyes and just gives in, the way he would lose himself in a good play, or in parkour jumps, when bliss became far more important than reality. He has to keep his eyes closed, because he knows he will not be able to control himself if he doesn’t. He feels Shizuo’s own eyes burning into him the whole time, as clearly and as real as Shizuo’s hands on his skin.

For Shizuo is just as enthusiastic as him, even afterwards, hugging Izaya back and not letting go.

“Thank you,” he says, and Izaya just nuzzles him weakly in reply.

-

That morning, Izaya is oddly relaxed. He should be freaking out, he should be preparing for the worst, but instead he feels as if something dark has been lifted off him. It’s _happened_. He doesn’t need to agonise over it any more. It’s done, and the consequences would come when they came.

“Are you OK?” Shizuo murmurs. It is 11 in the morning and they are still in bed, still holding and stroking each other.

“Mmm,” he says. “I’m in two minds about whether to tell Shinra or not.”

“Don’t tell him,” Shizuo says. He pulls back to look at the informant. “Not if he’s going to give you a hard time. It’s none of his business.”

“Mmm,” Izaya says again. “We probably should have waited, though. If you’re getting better as quickly as you say, you might as well have left it a little longer.”

 “I waited long enough as it is,” Shizuo says. “Stop worrying about all that. It’s not important.”

-

Izaya doesn’t stop worrying about it, but he stops talking about it, and simply crosses his fingers and waits.

He doesn’t have to wait very long.

They are in Shizuo’s house, looking for the remote – memory issues aside, Shizuo was never the most organised of people in the first place – when Shizuo stops and appears to be staring at something.

“Found it?” Izaya calls, craning his head over.

Shizuo is staring at an old matchbox he’d swiped from under the couch. Izaya stiffens as he realises what it is. It is from one of the first bars Shizuo had worked in, the one Izaya got him fired from, the one that had arguably sent their enmity spiraling out of control. 

Seeing the tension in Shizuo’s back, Izaya silently gets to his feet and edges to the door. He doesn’t know how much Shizuo remembers, but he knows its enough, and Izaya’s not thinking straight enough to be able to defend himself. It's as if he's falling from a great height and can see the ground rushing towards him.

Shizuo seems to remember him then and looks up.

“Where are you going?”

Izaya considers, but considering costs him time, and he ends up pinned to the wall before he can make up his mind. Not aggressively, just in Shizuo’s usual playful, if overpowering, way.

“You’re always running away from me,” he says, running his lips over Izaya’s neck.

“I thought you might have…”

“What?” Shizuo says. “Remembered everything? Yeah, I have. Don’t freak out,” he says, feeling Izaya stiffen. “It’s all right.”

Izaya freaks out none the less, in his head, wondered if he’s about to be crushed.

“...You’re not mad?” he asks tentatively, when it doesn’t come.

“Yes,” Shizuo says, still nuzzling him and not looking at him. “And no. It’s confusing. It’s…painful.”

“ _Painful_?”

“Yeah. You know. Fighting with someone who's important to you, even if it’s in the past. It doesn’t feel good.”

Izaya doesn’t react. His heart hammers in Shizuo’s arms.

“Maybe you don’t remember everything," he says eventually.

Shizuo huffs a laugh.

“I’d love to know what you come up with when that one expires, Izaya-kun.”

This helps, but he’s still not convinced. He curls his fingers in Shizuo’s hair and pulls his head up to look at him. He’s met with that same I-can’t-help-it look, slightly embarrassed, slightly afraid.

“I know,” Shizuo says. “I’m so fucking fucked up. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. But I do want this. I do. And you do too. It might not make sense to you logically, but it makes sense to _you_. That’s why you like it so much.”

He says this with his old energy, in the way he had often vowed to kill him.

“Don’t get scared of me,” he says, as Izaya continues still doesn't speak.

Izaya glares at him, offended.

“I’m not scared of you, you idiot.”

He kisses Shizuo to prove it, who opens his mouth hungrily, and Izaya realises too late that he’s fallen for it, but it doesn’t seem to matter.


End file.
